WITH THE RESCUE of Captain Richard Phillips from a pirate-filled lifeboat in the Indian Ocean, President Obama has survived the first dramatic crisis of his administration with colors flying. All the world was watching to see how a new, untested president would react to one of the most elemental tests of any president: how to handle the public kidnapping of an American citizen being held for ransom. The deeper crises he faces are long-term ones and will not be resolved so easily, but the success of Easter Sunday will make it all a little easier politically.

Obama was lucky that it was only one American, and not a whole embassy full as in Tehran 30 years ago - a crisis that ended with the hostages being released after 444 days and a failed rescue mission, but ended any chance that President Carter would have a second term.

Obama was lucky, too, in that he was dealing with pirates beyond the law of any nation, not a sovereign state, and on the open ocean and not among the warrens of a hostile town. The whole incident was over in a matter of days, not months.

It takes nothing away from the skill of the US Navy Seal sharpshooters to say there was a good deal of luck that the incident did not end in tragedy. If the pirates had not gotten careless and showed themselves - perhaps they thought they were protected by darkness - there might have been days of national mourning for an undoubted hero.

Obama's handling of the affair went beyond luck, however. He didn't heed the advice of those on the left who said the pirates were only businessmen of sorts and that ransom should be paid, as is the custom. Nor did he bluster and threaten the way Teddy Roosevelt famously did over the kidnapping of an American, Ion Perdicaris, by a Moroccan bandit named Mulai Ahmed Raisuli 105 years ago. The statement that America wanted "Perdicaris alive or Raisuli dead" electrified the Republican convention in Chicago that year, and if there was any hesitation over TR's renomination before, there was none after.

TR sent warships to Tangier, but the matter was resolved when the Moroccan government paid the ransom. That Perdicaris had renounced his American citizenship years before was kept a secret. The Perdicaris incident was recalled in right-wing blogs last week before the Phillips rescue, almost wishing that Obama would be found wanting. But Obama never said "Captain Phillips alive or Somali pirates dead." As it was, he got both.

There could not be two more different men than Roosevelt, the greatest political showman of his age, and no-drama Obama. But by sensibly not urging a surrender to pirate demands, and leaving it to the officers of the USS Bainbridge to decide when and if to use lethal force, Obama won the day. US bombers are not raining down death on Somali villages, nor is a shameful tribute being paid - neither overreaction, nor under-reaction. There was a certain symmetry, too, in the rescue ship USS Bainbridge being named for William Bainbridge, one of the American Navy officers who helped suppress piracy on the Barbary Coast of Africa 200 years ago.

The Somali problem persists, however, and, as the pirates threaten, they may seek revenge against Americans or other foreigners. Memories of "Black Hawk Down" and the failure of other expeditionary forces in Somalia stay the hands of those who would go in with Marines and clear the pirates out. Casualties among noncombatants would be high, and Somalia is the quintessential failed state with little chance of beneficial change anytime soon.

An answer could lie in a convoy system for merchant ships, which would make it easier for navies to guard them than with shipping spread out and uncoordinated over vast stretches of ocean. Perhaps an exclusion zone far out to sea in which fishing vessels would be banned might help, as pirates use fishing boats to stalk their prey.

The current situation of pirates getting richer and richer on ransoms, and ranging farther and farther out to sea to disrupt shipping and taking hostages, however, is no longer acceptable, and never should have been.

yes, yes, julie understand: absolutely no matter what, you right and your side win.

whatever make you feel better, dipshit.

no...it simple really...you think aye am a republican. and aye am not. aye don't like republicans...aye do find them to have helped indigo agenda though...aye don't like dems either...and they need to come together...moderates need to bring more liberals into the fold...esp.on national security issues.

"w" was a pub...but aye appreciate his wrangler politiques

and "'bam" is a crat...and aye appreciate his good cop politics...

get it?

both have destroyed the "dovesellers" like yourself...get it, bigotboy?

you know who aye didn't want in the c.i.c. position, right...your girl hiliary...and she is not.